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Kosovo War Was Over Oil!

The recent U.S.-led NATO aerial slaughter in the Balkans proves once again that imperialism always leads to war. Clinton, Blair, and other NATO bosses said they were bombing Yugoslavia for "humanitarian" reasons. This was a Big Lie worthy of Hitler. The humanitarian hype about saving Kosovar Albanian refugees was a disgusting, cynical cover for the war’s true motives.

The war was primarily a struggle for control of the potential profit bonanza from oil in the Caspian Sea region. On a shaky, temporary basis, it united the imperialists of Western Europe and their U.S. rivals against Milosevic. Competing factions of the U.S. ruling class, fresh from their Clinton impeachment brawl, also briefly got together to swat him down. In neither case did this unity last. U.S. imperialism may have shown that it can still literally get away with murder in defense of its profit interests. It continues to dominate the international scene. On the other hand, the latest Balkan war also sharpened every major contradiction in the world and deepened the main splits among U.S. bosses. It settled nothing. On the contrary: far wider and bloodier oil wars are in the cards, and a brutal struggle is brewing among factions of U.S. rulers over control of state power.

Exxon Rivals Dive Into the Caspian

However, the Rockefeller companies can no longer dictate as absolutely as they once did. The race for Caspian oil provides a case in point. When the Soviet Union broke up in the 1990s, Rockefeller competitors began a stampede for alternate sources near and beneath the Caspian Sea. Leading the charge were British Petroleum (BP) and Amoco (which merged in 1998) and the Russian giant Lukoil. However, getting oil from the Caspian to market isn’t easy. The Caspian is landlocked, and therefore oil companies and governments have woven a tangled web of competing pipelines.

The Balkans are crucial to these pipelines because oil destined for Western Europe must pass through them at one point or another. In early 1997, BP and the Texas Halliburton Company proposed a pipeline that would go from Burgas in Bulgaria through Skopje in Macedonia (15 miles from Kosovo) to Vlore, a port in Albania. It was to carry 750,00 barrels of BP Amoco crude to European Union markets.

The Rockefeller oil moguls consider the Balkans strategic for different reasons. Exxon-Mobil has no pipelines of its own there. But they certainly don’t want to lose the rich European market to BP Amoco or anyone else. They therefore have a strategic stake in Caspian-related developments. Geography also makes the Balkan region a key stepping-stone to the Rockefeller Middle Eastern interests. So the main wing of U.S. bosses has an interest in keeping Balkan countries divided, weak, and pro-U.S. The first Rockefeller plan for the former Yugoslavia set up its provinces in the early 1990s as "autonomous" regions and put local tyrants in charge of each.

The oil pipelines could only be a side reason and not the necessarily the main one(s). There were many reasons for the attack and the country was destroyed along old faultlines which were based on history of the region, earlier wars and treaties and ethnic divisions. But since we are on pipelines, there is a little recent news on the AMBO (Albania-Macedonia-Bulgaria Oil) pipeline:

Vecer: Talks will be Held in Bulgaria for AMBO Pipeline

22 July 2006 | 13:12 | FOCUS News Agency

Skopje. The Macedonian Minister of Economy Fatmir Besimi will take part in talks for building of Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation (AMBO) pipeline. The talks will take place in Bulgaria next week, the Macedonian Vecer newspaper reports. The main topic of Besimis’ talks with Bulgarian, Albanian representatives and the US corporation AMBO will be the track on which the pipeline from Burgas to Vlora is to pass. Last month the talks in Sofia were interrupted since the Bulgarian and the Albanian representatives demanded funds beforehand from the US investor for realization of the project. Beside the three Balkan countries, Europe and USA are also demonstrating interest to the building of the pipeline. According to evaluations Macedonia will get some USD 30 million, the newspaper reports.